'Tetro': Coppola boldly creates a tale of two brothers

Francis Ford Coppola's new film, "Tetro," glows with confidence, even as it wanders into strange waters; it's the work of a mature filmmaker unafraid to make bold decisions. "Tetro" is filmed in gloriously shadowed black and white, with a few color sequences that pop like jewels on black velvet. It is a drama that veers into melodrama, into dance, into riffs on other films, beginning and ending with the eerie image of huge white drops of light against dark.

Unlike his previous film, the mystifying "Youth Without Youth," "Tetro" has a relatively clear story at its heart (albeit one with an unexpected twist). Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich, making a fine, DiCaprio-ish screen debut) is an Italian-American teenager who travels to Buenos Aires to find his estranged older brother, Angelo (Vincent Gallo), who now calls himself Tetro. Though Tetro's warmhearted girlfriend Miranda (Maribel Verdú, of "Pan's Labyrinth") tries to smooth things over, the reunion is rocky as the two brothers come to terms with their past, which includes a powerful musician father and a beautiful, lost mother.

Though "Tetro" struggles with pacing, particularly in the last half-hour, and includes a few sequences that seem strangely out of place (such as a sex scene involving Bennie and two women), it remains original and vivid throughout. We see dream sequences filmed in grainy color, faded like photographs left loose in a drawer; a dance sequence is a clear homage to the choreography and drama of "The Red Shoes" as an orchestra conductor seems to pull a dancer toward him like a magnet on a stage engulfed in waves. Each character is an artist of some sort — Tetro and Bennie are both writers, Miranda is a dancer — and here, redemption comes through art and imagination.

With its loose meanderings, "Tetro" isn't for everyone, and those looking for another "Godfather" won't find it in this small-scale tale of a troubled Italian-American family. But for beauty, vision and the palpable sense of a veteran filmmaker still reveling in possibility, it's something to see.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com